Enlarging your at-home workforce can have a major effect on IT architecture, security/compliance, and company culture. Progent has two decades of background helping businesses of all sizes to design, configure, administer, optimize, and debug IT environments that support work-from-home employees. Progent can help your Carlsbad company to select the right tools and adhere to best practices in creating and maintaining a secure virtual office ecosystem for telecommuters that promotes collaboration and delivers top business value. Progent can provide services that go from as-needed expertise for helping you past occasional technical bottlenecks to full project management to help you successfully complete business-critical tasks.
Progent can assist Carlsbad, California businesses to succeed with any facet of building a high-functioning work-from-home ecosystem by delivering network infrastructure configuration services, IP voice troubleshooting, voice/video conferencing support, collaboration platform customization and training, public cloud connectivity, Call Desk outsourcing, data security, backup/restore solutions, and centralized management.
Infrastructure for Teleworkers
Setting up the network infrastructure required to support an at-home work environment can be particularly challenging if you have to manage a mix of personal hardware such as PCs and notebooks, Internet routers, and Wi-Fi APs from different manufacturers and with a mix of OS software and firmware levels. Progent's experience providing remote support for both legacy as well as current technologies in virtual office solutions allows you to make efficient use of your available infrastructure and provides you with fast access to top-tire consultants for implement necessary upgrades. Support services offered by Progent to assist your company to implement a high-functioning work-at-home ecosystem include:
IP Voice Integration for an At-Home Workforce
Expanding the corporate phone system to accommodate remote users is critical to maintaining a productive work-at-home solution. A broad range of cloud-centric IP voice platforms are popular with small and mid-size businesses to support telecommuters. Many enterprises rely on Cisco's modern or legacy products for VoIP solutions. Progent can help organizations of any size to plan or tune a remote IP voice environment that delivers the versatility, convenience and security needed for telecommuters. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE IP Voice consultants offer advanced support to assist businesses optimize their existing Cisco IP voice environments to support an expanding at-home workforce.
Voice/Video Conferencing for At-Home Workers
A wide range of voice/video conferencing products from leading vendors support online meetings, video and voice conferencing, chat, and screen/content sharing for both onsite users and at-home workers. Many organizations utilize a mix of products to meet the needs of their different partners and customers. Progent can assist you to maintain your current conferencing environment and enhance the productivity of your at-home employees.
Microsoft Collaboration Software for an At-Home Workforce
Microsoft's collaboration platforms are tightly integrated with Microsoft's popular Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 suites, providing a rich environment of applications that deliver a cohesive user experience for exchanging information across a corporate network and on a broad range of endpoints. Progent has delivered online consulting services for SharePoint and Exchange Server since their initial publication and can help your company to tune these flagship collaboration platforms to maximize the effectiveness of your remote workers.
SharePoint uses web sites to facilitate collaboration and information delivery by providing policy-based access to content, business processes, and utilities for looking through enterprise-wide business data. SharePoint allows you to build secure web portals that permits remote workforce to view and edit aggregated corporate intelligence via Wikis, Blogs, social networking web sites, and Web Parts (Widgets). For information about Progent's SharePoint consulting services, see SharePoint configuration and application development consulting.
Exchange and Exchange Online offer secure collaboration features including public folders, shared mailboxes, and shared calendars and contacts. Progent's Microsoft certified Exchange experts can show you how to activate and utilize these features for your at-home workers. For information about Progent's Exchange expertise, refer to deployment consulting services for Exchange.
OneDrive is Microsoft�s collaborative cloud file hosting and synchronization service, similar to GoogleDrive. At-home users can store files to OneDrive, and colleagues anywhere can retrieve them safely through a web browser. Included with Office and Microsoft 365, OneDrive allows remote workers to jointly author documents. Revisions made offline are automatically synced when you go back online. To find out about Progent's expertise for Microsoft OneDrive, see Microsoft Onedrive configuration consulting.
Cloud Integration Services for Teleworkers
Progent can provide affordable online support for enabling organizations to create, maintain and optimize integrated network models that include internal data centers, at-home workers, branch offices, plus public cloud services. Progent offers top-tier consultant for all types of public cloud service delivery such as Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Progent can help telecommuters fix problems with cloud connectivity, authentication, and security.
Azure is a popular platform for cloud software and services that enables you to utilize IT infrastructure, virtual servers, and critical applications running on Microsoft's extensive cloud. Azure includes more than one hundred services services such as the ability to host Windows and Linux-based virtual machines, on-demand cloud storage, messaging, application development with Visual Studio, and data backup. Progent can help you to deploy VMs on Azure Virtual Machines, integrate cloud-based storage on Azure Storage services, unify identity control with Azure AD, and plan data backup and restore systems with Azure Backup. Progent can also show you how to create protected access to Azure services for telecommuters by setting up and troubleshooting firewalls and VPN IPsec tunnels. For information about Progent's support services for Azure, see Microsoft Azure consulting.
Microsoft 365, formerly called Office 365, is Microsoft's popular family of business productivity software and cloud services available on a subscription basis. Microsoft applications and services are provided in a selection of bundles designed for users ranging from individuals and households to large enterprises. Progent offers fast and affordable remote access to consultants familiar with Microsoft 365-compatible devices running Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android technology. Progent can assist you to assess the numerous subscription plans offered with Microsoft 365 and configure 365 applications for your teleworkers in a way that delivers top business value. For details about Progent's expertise for Microsoft 365, refer to Microsoft 365 consulting services.
Exchange Online is among the most popular cloud-based applications in Azure-hosted Microsoft 365 product line. Microsoft 365 Exchange Online provides the advantages of reduced spending for physical infrastructure, easier management, on-demand scaling, high availability, and additional advantages associated with public clouds. Microsoft has engineered Exchange Online to run seamlessly with local Exchange environments, allowing you to build hybrid information systems. Progent's certified Exchange experts are available for occasional assistance to get you through tough IT bottlenecks and can also provide comprehensive project management outsourcing to make sure your remote workers have easy and secure access to your Microsoft 365 Exchange Online environment. For details Progent's support services for Exchange Online, visit Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration and support consulting.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a trailblazer in the public cloud computing arena and is the world's leading source of cloud-based services. Progent can provide rapid and economical online contact with cloud connectivity experts who can assist your organization to plan, implement, manage, and debug hybrid information networks that incorporate Amazon AWS cloud-based services with local resources and with other public clouds like Microsoft Azure. Progent also offers the skills of Cisco-certified CCIE networking experts to assist you to build a high-availability network model so your employees have a consistent computing environment whether they are working from your headquarters, a branch office, at home, or on the move. To find out about Progent's expertise for Amazon AWS, refer to Amazon AWS integration support.
Google Cloud Platform is a leading suite of cloud services that provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products. Progent's Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco consulting experts can assist you to extend your current IT resources with the Google Cloud Platform, and Progent's DBA consultants can show you how to make your critical applications cloud friendly so your telecommuters can benefit fully from Google Cloud Platform services. Progent's consultants can assist your organization to deploy virtual machines on Google Cloud Compute Engine, plan an efficient storage system with GCP Storage services, and streamline identity control for remote workers with GCP Cloud Identity services. Progent's consultants can also help your business to use GCP's unified management tools to administer and monitor your Google Cloud ecosystem. For details, go to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) integration services.
Help Desk Support for Telecommuters
A sudden, enterprise-wide transition to a from-home business model, which might be the result of a pandemic or as an element of a business continuity process, can overwhelm even a high-performing in-house Call Center. Progent's Call Center services make it possible for businesses to outsource or augment their Help Desk Call Center by using Progent's remote Technical Response Center (TRC) services.
Security and Compliance for Teleworkers
Work-from-Home (WFH) employees commonly utilize their own computers and usually work in a poorly secured physical area. This situation increases their susceptibility to cyber attacks and calls for judicious deployment of firewalls, anti-malware tools, multi-factor authentication, remote endpoint monitoring, extensive end-user training, and the development of security policies based on best practices. Progent's veteran team of cybersecurity support consultants can assist you to plan, configure and maintain an effective cybersecurity solution that guards critical IT assets in networks that include remote workers.
Firewalls enable companies to create a network environment that can be safely accessed by on-premises users as well as by teleworkers, mobile employees, vendors, clients, and other stakeholders. Next-generation firewall devices permit you to configure and control appropriate permissions to various groups of users and to scale your network and adjust your security profile as your company evolves and as network attacks grow more sophisticated. Progent supports both new and legacy security appliances from all major vendors including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Check Point, Juniper, and Fortinet. For details about Progent's firewall configuration expertise, see firewall configuration and support services.
Remote Endpoint Security Monitoring makes it easy to watch over the disparate computers used by teleworkers and either reject or identify and respond to the latest cyber attacks such as ransomware. With ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) services, a lightweight software agent is put on every secured endpoint device, watching all activity and using advanced machine learning from SentinelOne to identify new threats before they can spread. When an attack is discovered, ProSight Active Security Monitoring instantly disconnects the targeted endpoint from the network to contain the threat. Since the ProSight ASM software agent is autonomous, endpoint devices stay protected even if they are not connected to the Internet. To learn more about ProSight Active Security Monitoring, visit remote endpoint security monitoring for telecommuters.
Progent's Duo authentication services incorporate Cisco's Duo cloud technology to protect against compromised passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo enables single-tap identity confirmation on iOS, Google Android, and other personal devices. Using Duo 2FA, when you log into a secured application and give your password you are asked to confirm who you are on a unit that only you have and that uses a separate network channel. A wide range of out-of-band devices can be used for this second form of authentication including a smartphone or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You can designate multiple verification devices. For more information about Duo identity validation services, see Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for remote workers.
Security Audits can assess the exposure of your network to all classes of outside and local security threats for a network that includes an at-home workforce. Progent can run remote, automated security analysis software for rapidly and affordably uncovering a wide variety of security gaps that can be surfaced over the Internet. Progent's endpoint security assessment consulting services, which can be managed by security experts with advanced credentials including CISA, ISSAP, and GIAC, can help you to audit your operations and policies and assess your WAN infrastructure to enable you to design top-level security for your remote workers.
Download White Paper: Securing a Work-From-Home (WFH) Network
To view or download a white paper about key things to focus on for protecting a network that includes work-from-home staff, click:
Securing a Work-From-Home Environment White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)
Data Protection for Telecommuters
The field of Data Protection covers saving and recovering vital data in order to avoid data loss and minimize restoration time in the event of storage system failures resulting from equipment issues, software hiccups, operator error, cyber attack, or other causes. Dependable data protection solutions can be especially challenging to design and maintain in hybrid networks that combine private data centers, public clouds, and at-home workers.
Unified Management for Telecommuters
Microsoft has renamed and reshuffled its endpoint management platforms under the title Microsoft Endpoint Manager, which encompasses Intune for cloud management of remote devices and Configuration Manager for managing on-premises endpoints. Endpoint Manager offers a centralized solution for protecting corporate data by controlling on-premises, mobile, and at-home endpoints.
Intune
Intune is a component of Microsoft's Endpoint Management suite that also features Microsoft Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud-based service for managing and protecting off-premises devices and software. Managed endpoint computers can be user owned or company owned. Network admins managing the enrolled endpoint computers of telecommuters can utilize Intune to deploy and validate apps on managed devices, push updates and certificates, configure rules for permission to access information and networks, manage passwords, establish VPN connections, determine how home-based workers share data, establish threat defense, verify security compliance, and erase corporate information from lost, stolen or decommissioned endpoint devices. Microsoft Intune works with iOS, Google Android, Windows, and macOS endpoints. To find out about Microsoft Intune and how Progent can assist you to use Microsoft's Endpoint Management to manage the devices of your at-home workers, go to Intune remote device management expertise.
VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is an advanced unified Mobile Device Management platform that helps network managers to keep off-premises endpoint devices up to date and secure. Workspace ONE uses VMware AirWatch for unified endpoint administration along with VMware's Horizon virtual application delivery technology for access control, app management, and setup management of endpoint computers. Workspace ONE operates with devices powered by Windows 10, macOS, Apple iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or leading distros of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is offered by subscription as a cloud service or as an on-site deployment through a perpetual license. Key capabilities of Workspace ONE include rapid over-the-air deployment of new laptops, immediate onboarding of new users, policy set up and enforcement for all classes of endpoints, unifies management reporting and analytics, an email encryption gateway, and integration with Microsoft apps and cloud-based services. To find out about Progent's expertise for VMware Workspace ONE, refer to VMware Workspace ONE mobile device management consultants.
Contact Progent for Telecommuter Support Services
To get in touch with Progent about creating and managing an efficient telecommuter solution for your Carlsbad, California company, call